


an undiscovered first

by jadeddiva



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Depends how thirsty I get about 2000s-era Connor Trinnear, F/M, Florida Man in Space, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Rating May Change, idk look 2020 has been a r i d e
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: He’s always found her oddly infuriating, and it’s not like that’s changed since they’ve had sex.  Now, instead of being frustrated by her cool demeanor and Vulcan platitudes, he’s frustrated by thinking he’s got a handle on what’s happening between them, only to be thrown for a loop the minute he sees her again.Trip, T’Pol, and their exploration.  Set between Harbinger (3x15) and Home (4x3).
Relationships: T'Pol/Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	an undiscovered first

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m showing up fifteen years late with Starbucks but that’s the world we’re in these days. I made it through the first two seasons of Enterprise fully believing T’Pol had a tally score in her quarters for how many first contacts Trip fucked up. And then the Xindi arc happened, Trip Tucker grew as a person, and now here we are. I still fully believe she’s got a tally score, but that she’s more lenient about his transgressions than in the past. 
> 
> Also thank you to Star Trek for getting me through 2020. *finger guns*

The thing is: he thinks about T’Pol. All of the time. 

When he is in bed, unable to sleep. When he eavesdrops on a conversation in the mess hall and wonders what questions she might ask him as she tries to understand humans better. When he’s got a problem in engineering and needs an extra pair of eyes or hands. When he doesn’t have a problem, but rather an idea that needs a clever mind to rip it to shreds and help him build it into something better. 

When she’s right in front of him, brilliant and stubborn and beautiful and looking at him like he’s an idiot. That’s when he says something, anything, to get a reaction, to chip away and discover more of who she really is underneath. 

She always reacts to him, without fail (he probably shouldn’t be so smug about that).

When he is in bed, unable to sleep, he replays the conversation at night, over and over, the memory of her standing on the bridge/the science lab/engineering/the turbolift, eyebrow raised and eyes flashing in annoyance the last thing he thinks of before the nightmares take hold.

(Trip knows he’s prone to hyperbole but it’s true that he thinks about her all of the time.)

...

The Expanse is a mystery wrapped in anomalies wrapped in near-constant danger. Never have the stakes been higher, never have the consequences been more dire, etc and etc, ad infinitum.

The mission changes the crew, and not just with the addition of the MACOs. There’s a low thrum of tension that runs through the ship counter to the hum of the engines, creating enough dissonance that they’re all constantly on edge. 

Trip knows the tension feels different for everyone. For Jon, it's a single-minded pursuit of the Xindi at all costs. For Malcolm, it’s the rivalry with the MACOs in general and Major Hayes in particular. As for Trip, he has no desire to burn the Xindi worlds to the ground and salt the earth behind them, though that’s the vibe that the Captain is giving off. 

Trip just wants to wrap his hands around the throat of whoever killed Elizabeth, and tighten his grip. He wants to ask them if they understand the true nature of what they did. He wants to tell that Xindi team that made the weapon, whoever they are, that they killed his baby sister and millions of others when they attacked earth based on the bogus belief in a future that hadn’t come to pass.

After that, he doesn’t know what will happen.

Needless to say, that sort of anger isn’t quite conducive to restful sleep.

...

Neuropressure with T’Pol was always more intimate than Phlox made it out to be. The Denobulan had pitched the idea as a way to help with his insomnia instead of meds, and it had reached such a critical point that Trip agreed, easily. 

He thought there was no way that the buttoned-up, repressed Vulcans had something so sensual in their back pocket.

It took him more than a few days to get past the initial embarrassment of having his colleague touch him in places - his back, his feet, his neck, his abdomen - that colleagues normally do not touch each other, all of this taking place in her quarters, at night, with candles glowing softly in the background. It took him more than a few days of listening attentively to her prompting as they moved through the postures, him learning how to regulate his breathing while tamping down on the spikes of arousal that threatened to ruin everything every time she brushed her fingers against his stomach.

It was hard, at first, because T’Pol is beautiful and smart and totally Trip’s type, even if Jon and everyone else thinks any woman is his type (they aren’t). Trip’s always liked her, just a little bit, even if she was giving him shit for getting pregnant (he didn’t know!) or sleeping with a princess (who wouldn’t!) or just arguing with him in general (he’s never enjoyed arguing that much!). There’s always been something about her that’s drawn him like a moth to a flame: at first, he thought it was his frustration with Vulcans that made him want to bicker with her at every opportunity, and later he assumed it was the catsuit that she wore as her official uniform that was a welcome distraction.

It’s only after months of neuropressure and hours of conversations that progress far more easily than he ever thought possible that Trip realizes he just likes her. 

He likes her as a person, as a colleague, as a friend. He’s never met a woman with a technical mind as keen as T’Pol, and while that’s a huge turn-on it’s also just satisfying, to have someone he can converse with on the same level. Before her, no one - certainly not his friends, definitely not his girlfriends - could keep up with him let alone run circles around him mathematically when he started going on about warp theory or modifying the nacelle design. 

But she’s a friend, and a colleague, and a person, and whatever inappropriate thoughts filter through his head when her (very warm) hands touch him are just that: thoughts. Like clouds in the sky, he lets them drift past, noticing them but moving on because there is nothing he can do. 

They are in the chain of command. 

They are officers on a ship hurtling through an unknown region of space hoping to stop a weapon of mass destruction. 

They are two different species, and all of this is just a favor, and he will never be more than an annoying fellow associate.

…

He’d be lying if the thought of Amanda Cole hasn’t crossed his mind (look, the Expanse is a lonely place; he can’t blame himself for wanting reciprocated affection). 

Amanda is pretty. Amanda is from Florida. Amanda isn’t in his chain of command. Amanda is comfortable with small talk. Amanda is a flirt. There is such an easy frame of reference that nothing about being interested in Amanda feels hard, which makes it the complete opposite of his relationship with T’Pol which is constantly fraught with misunderstanding and misplaced emotions.

Neuropressure with Amanda is his idea, even though he knows that there is something private about the practice based on how carefully guarded T’Pol has been about it. His reasoning for initiating it is because he wants to help someone like T’Pol helped him, but there’s also a part of him that wants to see where Amanda’s flirting could go in a more private location than the mess or the gym. 

(The Expanse is a lonely place, and Trip is tired of being alone.)

...

Trip’s been around the block more than once and he knows what the silent treatment looks like. T’Pol is giving him the silent treatment, even though she would deny it, because nothing a Vulcan does is illogical. 

To the casual observer, their conversations about Amanda and neuropressure would imply that T’Pol was upset about Trip sharing a Vulcan practice with another human. But he knows her well enough that he knows she would never have overlooked an opportunity to lecture him on respecting the cultural practices of other species because she’s done it so often that he's got it memorized. The 

No - T’Pol’s behavior tonight is different.

If T’Pol was human, he would think that her sarcasm earlier and her silence tonight would be jealousy. But Vulcan’s don’t experience jealousy, and besides, it’s not like - 

It’s not like they’re together, but Trip knows that he’s probably the person T’Pol is closest to on this entire ship, and he feels the same about her these days, and if she had done something they shared without him then - 

Then he would feel jealous too.

(Ain’t that some spit.)

It’s second nature at this point to instigate an argument with her when he wants to get to the root of the matter - anything to try to make sense of the situation. He’s saying things like your voice is tensing up, it’s a dead give-away, waiting for her to shoot him down again when he brings up how she might be attracted to him. She gives as good as she gets, deflecting and redirecting like she always does, but the conversation takes a hard left when she brings up the symbiote that saved his life, giving up his own in the process. 

He never thought it would be possible to be jealous of himself, but he is. 

He just doesn’t want her to know it because it doesn’t even make sense.

There’s a moment, after he says no, absolutely not, denying these feelings that have been fluttering beneath the surface of every one of their interactions, when he watches T’Pol’s face shift from what he assumed was feigned nonchalance to something else entirely. He’s seen it before - the way that she has to stop and process the information that someone has given her as it clashes against whatever it is that is going on inside that Vulcan brain of hers. Up until tonight, Trip’s only seen her do this in social situations, and usually when she is trying to understand some aspect of humanity - a colloquialism, a non sequitur - that doesn’t translate. 

Tonight is different. 

Her fingers tense up on his shoulders and she looks away, and if this was in any other circumstances he would say that she’s a system stalling out, nearing the need for a hard reboot but this - 

This is different. 

There’s a flicker of something - emotion, maybe? - that crosses her face and all he can think is that he’s lying to her, and that his lying is causing her distress. 

(He cannot stomach the thought of hurting her, even accidentally.)

It’s his fault she is upset, because he is jealous of Sim even though he probably has no reason to be. He’s jealous of whatever Sim might have done where T’Pol is concerned, because she’s clearly shared something with his clone that she hasn’t shared with him and there’s so many unsettling things about Sim, and Trip’s coma, and everything involving that debacle but the most unsettling thing is that there is a chance T’Pol had something romantic with another version of him that she has chosen not to replicate and for all that he pushes down what he feels, it hurts to think she wanted Sim but not him.

“Okay, maybe I am,” he says (would it be so hard for her to consider him as something more than a colleague?). 

Maybe he is a little jealous.

T’Pol’s face shifts, changes. Gone is whatever mask of calmness she wears and in its place is something else. 

Trip would almost call it earnestness, if he thought Vulcans could be earnest.

Then, well - that’s where things get complicated.

…

Complicated, but also really, really great. 

...

He’s stumbling into the mess hall, exhausted from everything that occurred overnight, head swimming with thoughts of her. His brain keeps replaying details of it over and over (the way her back arched when he pressed his lips below her ear) that he can’t even begin to focus, and especially not without caffeine (the whisper of her legs moving to cradle his hips - ).

He’s willing to deal with a lot of distraction if he can keep remembering that T’Pol wants him.

He’s not going to call it the best sex of his life, and he’s not even sure he was that good at it (he could have shown a lot more skill, a lot more finesse) but T’Pol seemed to really enjoy it and more than that, he hooked up with T’Pol which is pretty much the only thing that matters, because T’Pol wants him just as much as he wants her. 

Because he does want her. Right now it feels like she’s the only thing he’s ever wanted. He wants her frustrated glares and her whimpers when he strokes just the right spot (he wants to find all her sweet spots, wants to make her feel good - ) and he wants to just sit in silence with her because being around her is more than enough.

He spots T’Pol at a table, staring off into the distance while she drinks her tea (he remembers how restless her hands were, how eager she seemed to touch him and it’s not like he was any better but he never claimed to be patient, never pretended to be anything other than human). His heart starts to speed up, and there’s a flip-flop feeling in his chest when he sees her, beautiful and remote, an island all to herself. 

Trip wants to talk to her, just to figure out where they are and where they are going. He’s not good at relationships; there’s just too many other things that take priority over his attention - warp engines and Starfleet, most of the time. Too many late nights in the lab, too many forgotten birthdays and anniversaries and wedding invitations without him as a plus one. To be fair, most of the time he hasn’t really put the effort into relationships because things had been going well enough until they weren’t and when they get to that point, there’s almost no saving it.

But T’Pol is different, and he’s been making an effort where she is concerned since the moment she first came aboard. 

He slides into the chair next to her, makes idle small talk while he glances over. There is a small bruise right below the collar of her shirt and he remembers spending time there, pressing kisses and tasting the skin of her neck, brushing his teeth against the sharpness of her collarbone, listening as she gasped and threaded her fingers tightly through his hair. 

It makes him smile when he thinks about last night, and it takes him a moment to realize that he’s happy. It’s been so long since he was happy that it feels different, and foreign, but when he looks at T’Pol and sees her as the source of his happiness…

Yeah, that feels about right. 

…

Until it doesn’t. 

Until she reduces everything that happened between them to an exploration of human sexuality, with Trip in the role of local guide.

It’s a one-two gut punch, the loss of his happiness and the feeling of being used.

It’s only later, when he’s by himself, thinking about her, that he’ll register the embarrassment. The deep, gaping hole inside him where he thought that - 

That he assumed that - 

He lays back into his bed, staring at the rivets in the ceiling, the places where the pieces of the ship come together, and wishes there was something so solid that could keep him from falling apart.


End file.
